Proof that Jesus is God and that Scripture is True, Oh Yeah, Also Creationism

 BE ADVISED: I am not offering support for this proof within this post, because of the complexity of the proof and the amount of work required to go through the steps to validate it. I am just pointing to the nature of the proof and where it can be found.

One can benefit greatly from listening to those with other viewpoints. Recently someone in a Facebook group I was in challenged people to present the best evidence for Creationism. Years ago, I probably would have advanced a very truncated teleological argument. That is, we can tell there is a creator God, and some things about Him, by observing the nature of His creation. 

I say truncated because I am sure I would have focused on modern discoveries about the fine-tuning of our universe. If indeed our universe is the only one there is, it is very obvious that we are "meant to be here". Almost any other balance of forces other than those extant in the cosmos would result in either a vast thin cloud of hydrogen atoms (if any atoms at all) or the whole thing collapsing into one or a few black holes.

None of that however, was what Paul was talking about when he wrote in Romans 1:20 that "For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities, Hi eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen,  being understood from His workmanship, so that men are without excuse." Paul wasn't talking about just, or even primarily, astrophysics-  and certainly not what we have learned about it in modern times. He was talking about the entire orderly arrangement of existence, including how nature seems to have a moral disposition even while immorality is permitted to run rampant. 

For example, many have gotten ahead by dishonest means, but those who gain wealth in this way also have a tendency to lose it and fall in disgrace. Another example: One might think a man who is a "player" and spreads his seed to many women has an "evolutionary advantage" over those who commit themselves to a single woman. The reality is that "playas" tend to die alone sitting in their own feces. Societies that honor the biblical model for family are so superior to other methods, such as "mothers-brothers" cultures, that the latter are virtually extinct from the earth. Governments that are unjust tend to fall while those more just endure, and the kinds of things that count for "justice" are universal, not cultural. In ancient China it was called "losing the Mandate of Heaven" but the principle is similar whatever the name. Despite all the lawlessness, the universe has an underlying moral order. It "cares" about the moral choices of its inhabitants. This points to the Creator and even tells us something about His nature.

Though Paul writes that these attributes have been seen, it doesn't mean that all people will see them or that all who do will admit to seeing them. Some people are uncaring or oblivious to life's larger questions. Scripture also speaks of those who "deny the truth in unrighteousness." Men may be "without excuse", but that doesn't seem to stop would-be excuses from being proffered. Even the fine-tuning arguments have an escape hatch- it could be that a near infinite number of universes have bubbled up, and we, by chance, just happen to live in the one where things turned out right. In such a case, what looks like intent in the universe- that we were meant to be here- has another potential explanation. Chance could still be accepted as a reasonable explanation for what we see, if what we see is only an infinitesimal fraction of what "is". 

Of course, there is no way to determine that such a vast number of other universes exist, or if they do that they have random laws instead of laws like our universe, also fine-tuned. It is speculation beyond the reach of the Scientific Method. It seems a desperate evasion to me, but I've heard it used, and I really can't prove they aren't out there any more than the atheist can prove that they are. 

While these speculations are not vigorously testable, the ultimate and specific answer to the question of "is there a God" is testable. Jesus Christ made a testable statement about Himself, which could only be true if a) He was indeed who the scriptures say that He is and b) those scriptures were Divinely inspired from the start. He said (John 5:46) that Moses wrote about Him! In Luke, on the road to Emmaus, something similar is communicated in that it said that "beginning with Moses" He showed the apostles "things concerning Him".

These are astounding claims for a number of reasons, and coming from almost anyone else they would be considered ridiculous and dismissed out-of-hand. Genesis was compiled more than a thousand years before the Incarnation. Even the most secular critics would say more than five hundred years. The idea that they could be speaking of the work and person of Christ is basically impossible- except in the case that He is indeed who scripture says that He is and those scriptures are inspired by Him. In any other set of circumstances, it is an outlandish claim. It would be like President Trump saying that St. Thomas Aquinas was writing about him!

Further, institutional Christians denominations have not incorporated the words of Christ into their view of the text. Many, particularly evangelical sects in the United States, have largely adopted the view the rabbis who opposed Christ when it comes to early Genesis. This is less true of say, Eastern Orthodox, but the idea of systematically reinterpreting the text with a view to seeing if Christ's words about it are even feasible isn't something churches seem interested in. That's bad for obvious reasons, who are they supposed to be representing? But it is also good. If an elegant fit is found, the accusation that the fit is only so elegant because church priests forged the text to make it so falls flat. If such a thing had been done, that would have been the "party line" for viewing Genesis, not some rabbinical spin-off. Does this mean that Christians will have to give up their view of what the text means in order to put Christ into it? Yes. Are many of them willing to do so? Not that I have found, but there is still time.

It is as if, in these times of doubt, what was there all along becomes visible to us. It turns out that viewing the text the way Christ said to look at it, that it was about Him, is not more consistent with the rest of the text but also reconciles the text with much of the evidence from the natural world that has troubled so many people.

For a few examples, and I can make a strong case textual case for every one of these ideas, but it takes a lot of work to peel back all the misinformation and theology that isn't really in the bible first:

1) The initial state of the universe was not "perfect". Rather it was a place that needed a lot of improving.

2) The "days" of Genesis chapter one are not about illumination from our sun, but rather the true illumination produced when the Word enters the cosmos, Creator enters creation. Each instance improved the state of things until man was formed as Divine Agents to complete God's work of taming the unruly world. 

3) Therefore the "days" are not about a 24-hour solar cycle and are not limited in time. Indeed scripture teaches that the morning of the 7th "day" didn't even start until after the Crucifixion and is still ongoing. 

3) The seeming conflict between creationism and evolution is mostly an illusion, we live in a creation that was "meant" to be able to bring forth creatures on God's command (theistic evolution), after all, this was God's original command to both earth and seas. But this lower realm is one fit for us. Nature can't do God's will without God's help anymore than we can. The gulf between creationism and naturalism remains.

4) The conflict between the apparent great age of mankind and a relatively recent (less than 15Y ago) Adam is resolved in the Christ centered model because Adam's true role is to be a figure of Christ (Rom 5:14) and not the father of humanity. He was formed to bring the line of Messiah who would reconcile the world to God and complete God's assignment to mankind in Himself. 

5) Baptism is connected to the flood. It is where God's people are purified and what is unclean in them is put to death while what is approved safely passes through the waters of God's judgement due to the work of Christ. Baptism isn't about those who are not His getting wiped out. This is just a small part of the reason that a local flood, aimed only at the line of Adam in particular through Seth, fits the text better than a global flood. Not every kind of land animal was on the ark. It was a local flood with global consequences (since the works of God from chapter TWO would be wiped out and God's ordained method of deliverance through Messiah would be ended, causing the world to eventually perish). Other people, outside the line of the Seed, survived the flood. 


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These are just a few examples how the reasons secularists use to dismiss the bible are beating on a strawman, albeit a strawman that is proclaimed to be the Real Slim Shady by so many churches. 

We should not be able to do this. We should not be able to re-examine the text and by seeing it all about Christ and His work have it still make sense, make even more sense and fit even better together within the body of scripture than the rabbinical view. Yet not only are we able to do this, but doing so also resolves many of these paradoxes with evidence from the natural universe. 

This is like a vast and complicated math equation with a number of variables. We put in different variables trying to come up with a consistent and reasonable answer. Then someone suggests putting in a value that shouldn't be among the possibilities as the variable. We do so, and the results elegantly fit! And it was the same value for each "variable", that is, you assume the answer that most points toward the work and person of Christ and make that the meaning at each "fork in the road" of the text. If you do that, and only if you do that, the text is both internally most consistent and also best resolves paradoxes between the text and the rest of nature.

Is verifying all of this a lot of work? Yes, but the truth is only assured for those who seek it, earnestly. Not for those who are willing to consider it if it isn't too much trouble, or messes with their existing opinions. This world is designed to see if we care to prioritize seeking truth over other things. I've done my part, and it took me years to finish it.

Below is a link to the book, which is available in E-book version for no charge to those with access to a Kindle Unlimited Account. A link to the YOU TUBE channel is also given, and of course this blog is dedicated to issues related to the Christ-centered model. 

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Study on Origin of Domestic Horses Gets it Partly Right

 

Main chart from the paper. Click on image for a larger view. 

A recent paper concluded that the domestic horse did not originate in Anatolia, but rather in the Steppe. For some reason, it ignored the possibility of an Armenian Highland origin, even though I think their own paper at least equally points to that possibility. Part of the problem may be how one defines "origin" of modern domestic horses. I would define "origin" as that population of horses which was first domesticated that led directly to our modern domesticated horse population. They seem to be defining it as the first population that was established over a large area. That is a later event and admittedly one that is easier to nail down. 

First of all, looking at mtDNA, as this paper did because it couldn't get Y-DNA from the samples, can only tell us so much about the origin of the domestic horse. This is because like today, stallions were probably used to "spread the right genes" to other horse populations. We need Y-DNA to really solve this mystery and we didn't get it. At least not prior to the Bronze Age.

Secondly, the map above, from the paper, distinguishes the "Armenian Highlands" from Anatolia. The fact is that the western part of the Armenian Highlands make up the eastern-most part of Anatolia. The Araxas river goes through Armenia and to the west side is considered Anatolia and the east side is the start of the Caucus region, specifically the Lesser Caucuses. So they are imprecise with their geography. 

But they did go to a lot of trouble to find this evidence, so let's see what the mtDNA points to, even if it is inconclusive. Then I will explain how it fits in with the subject of this blog. Look at Q in the chart above, which was the only mtDNA type found in the Armenian Highlands in the more ancient data set, and was not found in western Anatolia prior to 2000 B.C. according to the study. So this is the dominant genotype in this one area, but rare or absent elsewhere. Thousands of years later, it makes up a disproportionate share of the mares in Anatolia. It didn't just hang on, like P, it prospered. That indicates that this mtDNA haplogroup (Q) was a part of the early domesticated population which later mixed with some wild types and supplanted others. 

This later influx of diverse mtDNA linages probably did come from the steppe, but that doesn't mean that the domestic horse originated there. Rather, based on how well Q did, stallions from the original Armenian Highland domestic herds were taken to the steppe and spread their genes to the diverse population of wild mares in the steppe, very much like what the authors of the paper describe happening with mtDNA "P" in Anatolia. Then when those Steppe people came across the mountains en mass as a "horse culture" they brought large numbers of their herd with them. Herds whose parental line was from the Armenian Highland herd. That herd had already spread west so that "Q" held a plurality of the maternal lines in Anatolia after 2,000 B.C. even with the influx of newcomers

While the ancient Armenians may have used horses, I hypothesize that they were not a horse culture until the IE came back over the mountains with a diverse and large horse population. Maybe it was the IE who came up with the idea of riding the horses themselves, and not just using them as a pack animal. This would be similar to the situation with gunpowder, invented in the east but thoroughly exploited in the west. So an explanation for the origin of domestic horses is needed which explain the data from mtDNA "Q", and the authors of this paper don't even touch that. Instead they focus on the diversity of types which flow into the region later. We will not know for sure until origin for the Y-DNA line for the dominant line of today's horses is found, but what I am suggesting fits all the evidence we have, not just some of it as is the case with the paper. (Late addition, I'd like to add that the later presence of types like "N" and "L" in Anatolia that were not found coming out of the Caucuses indicates that mares later came from the west as well, perhaps via the Balkans or Greece. The mtDNA from the Steppe just doesn't dominate in western Anatolia like it does later on in the highlands.) 

Further, I think we have to discount their connection of varied coat colors to the original domestication event. Man domesticated dogs for many thousands of years before the wide range of coat colors we now see were teased out of their genomes through selective breeding. The original domesticated horse population was liable to be small, and thus not genetically diverse in coat color. Also, the nearest living relative to the extinct E. hemionus hydruntinus that they reference in the study has a coat color very much like one of the horse coat colors they say arose through domestication, despite the fact that it is still very much wild. 

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How does this fit with the Christ-centered model for early Genesis? The model suggests that Adam wasn't the first man, but rather a specially created line of man to bring the Logos of God into humanity via the Messiah. Scripture gives us many strong hints that other people were already around when Adam and Eve lived in the garden. After they were expelled from the garden, they went east, as did Cain. I have an Anatolian Highland location for the garden, close to where the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers come together. This means they would wind up near the Armenian Highlands after the expulsion. I also have a date for Adam closer to 9,000 BC or so based on the fact that methods of calculation such as those used by Bishop Ussher can only give theoretical minimum dates and the actual dates will almost certainly be older. To understand why, see..

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Also a part of the model is that the animals fashioned for Adam in chapter two were only a subset of the vast array of animals made in chapter one. Specifically, it was focused on those useful and suitable for a domestic and agrarian lifestyle. In chapter one humanity had been given a mandate to tame and subdue the natural world, and had failed. The animals that the LORD God fashioned for Adam were meant to help make up for that lost time. They were "better" versions of creatures who were already out there. That is why they were made as part of God forming a "helper" for Adam. Even though the LORD God was playing a joke on Adam with the process, they really were helpers. 

If this is so then this region should be "ground zero" for domestication of many if not most of our current staple animals and plants. Especially the earliest ones. And that turns out to be the case with many of them, or at best there is a dual origin with one happening in Anatolia and the other somewhere else and modern types are a result of two origins. That may be the case here with horses. Adam's clan introduced this superior livestock to the world, and their neighbors to the north took it and ran. They may be the "mighty men of old" who are mentioned in Genesis chapter six as the result of the clan of Adam's daughters being taken as wives by the chiefs of those neighboring tribes. 

The book is really about something much less speculative and much much more wonderful than this. It is about how Genesis points to the work and person of Christ. Get the book...

                                      

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UPDATE: I shared some of this on a science blog (Eurogenes) where the researcher who runs the place is a strong advocate of the importance of Steppe cultures. He advocates for the only serious alternative to an Anatolian origin for the domestic horse, and that is a Steppe origin. He cited a study, my first link below, which he said proved that the Steppe Cultures were the origin for the modern horse line of stallions (which are all haplogroup Y-HT-1). My reply is below:

Thank you for that link. The Wutke et al study on stallion diversity which was the first link on your piece. As predicted, stallion diversity dropped dramatically while mare genetic diversity remained much higher, consistent with what I said (and is commonly known to be true) about using stallions to breed herds. 

Maybe a part of why we are not seeing this the same way is the precise question being asked. I am focused on the origin (not just the process of genetic domination) of the extant population of domestic horses today. There is no doubt, and the Wutke study supports this, that Steppe and Eastern European populations were essential to spreading the Y-HT-1 chromosome of horses today and making it what it is- the last haplogroup of surviving domestic horses. 

But does the Wutke study support the idea that this haplogroup originated in the Steppe? It does not. This quote from the study makes that clear "Haplotype Y-HT-1, on the other hand, which dominates in present-day stallions, was only detected later than 2200 BCE. Although its estimated age roughly correlates with the onset of domestication (3500 BCE; Fig. 4), this haplotype only started to become more frequent during later periods. All analyses indicate low Y-HT-1 frequency before 2200 BCE (fig. S1). However, the first time bin (>2200 BCE) only includes samples from Europe, with the easternmost samples falling on the longitude of the Black Sea (Fig. 2). Accordingly, Y-HT-1 could have been present with higher frequencies at that time in populations from further East."

They don't have the samples to say where the line leading to today's domestic horse (male side) originated. It was such a superior line that it is the sole surviving domestic haplogroup today, yet it lingered for over 1,000 years after its origin in a small population somewhere ("All analyses indicate low Y-HT-1 frequency before 2200 BCE"). After that it explodes and soon the other domestic lines are extinct, and it was in the Balkans early too. (If you look at figure 2 from the paper) The expansion did not seem to be centered on the Steppe.

To me, this evidence points to the Steppe cultures finding a superior line somewhere and using it to replace their existing stock. Maybe there were two independent domestication events, but once they found this obscure line that was a better domestic horse they quickly used it to replace the strain they had. I recall that this pattern is true for other domestic animals like the dog and perhaps the pig. There were separate domestication events and our modern types are mostly one kind over the other. In the case of the horse, the dominance of one domesticated strain became complete.

The Armenian Highlands are right across the Caucus Mountains. That is what divides them from the Steppe. This is the general area in which the first domesticated sheep, cattle, pigs, and goats are found. Is it likely that the people who originated our four biggest livestock mammals today never possessed a domesticated horse until the Steppe populations came through the region thousands of years after they domesticated these other mammals? The maternal line data, to the extent it says anything with such a paucity of samples, says this region had its own successful line of domestic horse. 

I think it is more likely that a horse was just less useful for a sedentary culture in the Armenian Highlands than it was for a group of mobile pastoralists in the wide-open Steppe. Maybe they only used the horse as a pack animal in the mountains and it was the Steppe people who first mastered life on horseback. That the Sumerians called the horse "the donkey of the mountains" supports this view. So the situation would be like what happened with gunpowder, even if invented in the east, its use was taken to new levels in the west. 

The bottom line is that the question of how Y-HT-1 came to be the sole line of today's domestic horse has been answered, and the Steppe cultures are a big part of that answer. What is still unclear is who developed that line.

PS- I think the line could be older than 3500 B.C. and what this late date reflects is the origin of the small group of stallions the Steppe people brought over from south of the Caucuses along with those on the ark. In other words, there was a population bottleneck which makes the group look somewhat younger than it is. The domestic horse spread later than other domestic animals because they were most useful in a particular environment and type of culture which developed later, cows and sheep are useful for just about any culture. 

Adapa as Adam Makes More Sense in the Christ-Centered Model

According to Ancient Near East legend Adapa of Eridu was a mortal man, but a sage with god-like insight and wisdom. According to some versions of the myth, he was the son of the god Ea (yes, pronounced like the first part, or the shortened version, of the name of the God of Abraham in scripture). The story, from at least 1370 B.C., is that he was summoned before the Sky God Anu to account for a rash action. He followed the advice of his patron god, and possible father, Ea, who told him to refrain from eating or drinking while he was before the gates of heaven. It turned out that Anu had relented on the idea of punishing Adapa and instead offered him the one thing he needed to become a god himself- immortality. This was to be obtained by eating something, but Adapa declined the food that Anu offered him on Ea's advice, thus costing himself, and mankind as a whole somehow, immortality.

 Some have attempted to connect him to the biblical Adam. The parallels are pretty obvious, but the connection has not been well-accepted in scholarly circles. The account is so old that it doesn't fit the template that is the current rage these days- that Genesis was written by unknown priests after the captivity in Babylon, based on stories they learned while captive. This is of course nonsense, the ancestors of the children of Israel were from the same region and would have had their own independent accounts of many events. Like Orwell once said, "Some ideas are so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them."

At any rate, it is not surprising that these same scholars go to great lengths to discount the idea that Adapa from Sumerian legend is none other than Adam from the book of Genesis. If you take the Jewish view of the material, which the church has unfortunately adopted without re-examining in the light of Christ, then they do seem different. Adapa is not the father of the whole human race. Though he does spend time before "heaven's gates" which could be an echo of Eden, there is no mention of a wife being fashioned for him, or any role in his fall. 

On the other hand, the Christ-centered model restores Adam to his New Testament role as a figure of Christ (Rom. 5:14), not the founder of the human race. There were already other people around when God formed Adam. Presumably he did learn wisdom from his time with the LORD God in the garden, and could share that with others after his expulsion. So the Adam of the Christ-centered model does sound a lot more like Adapa from Sumerian myth. Many of the details of the account would be adapted to Sumerian culture, and it discretely makes it seem like Adam lost his (and our) chance for immortality through obedience to Ea rather than disobedience. It is classic blame-shifting. 

As for which version of the story sounds like the original and which the derivative version, I ask you to use your experience in human behavior. The Sumerian version has the human getting the shaft from a rather callous Anu simply because Adapa was trying to do the right thing and follow Ea's instructions. In Genesis it is man's disobedience and lack of trust in God that caused them to lose access to the Tree of Life which could have made them immortal. To me, the Sumerian account sounds like the blame-shifter's version of what happened compared to Genesis which describes human behavior as it really is. In real life, we rarely get in trouble for following God's wishes too closely, but rather by disregarding them and choosing our own ways. Then we still blame God for our troubles, as it says in Proverbs, the foolishness of man subverts his own way, and then he frets against The LORD. 

Ea has similarities to God the Son in the Genesis accounts and Anu to God the Father. At least according to the Christ-centered model. I am not ready to spell them all out here. I need to study this in more depth, but right now it seems likely that Adapa is connected to Adam, at least as seen in the Christ-Centered Model for early Genesis.

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Did Adam Start the "Pre-Pottery Neolithic"?

I noticed an archaeological paper with an interesting take on the formation of the so-called "pre-pottery Neolithic" This quote is found at the end of the section "The Pre-Pottery
Neolithic Period (10,500–7000 BCE), Pre-Pottery Neolithic and the problem of origins:"

The beginning of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic culture in southeastern Turkey is at least a millennium earlier than in central Anatolia. There, as in northern Syria and Iraq, it appears almost suddenly, fully developed with no detectable predecessors. The early stages of PPNA are now known from Hallan Çemi, Körtik Tepe, Gürcütepe, all sharing similar but at the same time rather sophisticated assemblages; considering the homogeneity and the high level of sophistication, it seems obvious to surmise that there must have been a long period for it to develop earlier. In our view,the early cultures of the southern Levant do lack the degree of sophistication to be the ancestral stage of these cultures;

The authors are suggesting that Southeastern Turkey was where this phase first appears, and that the traditional view that it was borrowed from the Natufian culture in the southern Levant can't be right because it was too sophisticated. Yet the culture appears out of nowhere, with no detectable predecessors. This is very similar to the time and the place I think Adam and Eve wound up after they were expelled from the garden. Here is the extent of the culture when it moved to "phase B"....




The "Pre-Pottery" Neolithic B around 7,500 B.C. , Click for Larger View

The "pre-pottery" Neolithic wasn't a culture without pots. They had gorgeous and durable pots which they fashioned from various types of stone, like this one form about the same time period as the map...




So the development of clay pots via a potter's wheel is analogous to the printing press. It didn't make something new, we had books before that. It didn't make books more beautiful, the handcrafted books books were often much more artistic. It did make them much cheaper and and more common. Over in what is now China they had been making clay pots for some time. So "pre-pottery" as a label is somewhat deceptive. The "Pre-pottery Neolithic" was a time of tremendous advancement in both tool-making and manner of life (true agriculture and animal husbandry).

The pre-pottery Neolithic started around 10,000-10,500 BC and the "B" phase around 7500 BC. It is in about the right time and place for Adam's clan after they were expelled from the Garden of Eden according to the Christ-centered model described in "Early Genesis, the Revealed Cosmology". It is a two-population model which moves Adam from "Father of the Human Race" to his more biblical role of "figure of Christ" (Romans 5:14). There were already humans here when Adam was specially formed by God to bring line of Messiah into the world. This model posits that the plants and animals the LORD God provided in the garden were meant to "jump start" civilization by making Adam a "domestic man" at the right time- when humanity was able to adopt such a lifestyle. This culture is associated with the rise of true farming and animal domestication.

The other possibility is that Adam and Eve and the animals formed for them in the garden to "jump start" domestic living were introduced a bit after the start of the Pre-pottery Neolithic A" and were responsible for the "Pre-pottery Neolithic B" which saw an increased use of farming and domestic animals. In other words, once there was a place ready for farming (because they were already sedentary and harvesting wild grains anyway) the Lord God picked that as the spot to jump-start true civilized living and introduce the line which would produce Messiah into the world. There is a lot more evidence that needs to be gathered, but so far it amazes me how the cite from the paper above fits with what I wrote in "Early Genesis, the Revealed Cosmology."

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Have We Been Getting the Gihon River Wrong This Whole Time?

By MapMaster - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3578442

The location of the Garden of Eden isn't a salvation issue. This is a good thing because none of us really knows where it was! But the text does go to some trouble to describe its location as a real place in the physical world. This shows that it wasn't meant to be a metaphor or just a story about an imaginary place. Rather it was an account of events which happened in a real place. There was a time and a place where the LORD God dwelt with His people. And it is the hope of believers that a world such as this will be manifested in this earth again, made possible and more perfect by the finished work of Christ.

What we know from the text of Genesis chapter two is that a river flowed out of the land of Eden and watered the Garden. From there is was divided unto four chiefs or heads. Even that is somewhat vague, but I think it argues for a northern location for the garden. We believe that we have a good idea as to the identity of two of the rivers - the Tigris and the Euphrates. It is the Pison and the Gihon which are a mystery. 

In my book, I suggested among other things that the Murat or the Aras river could have been the Gihon, and that could still be the case. But there is another possibility that I and everyone else I know of has overlooked. The key to identifying the Gihon is that it runs through or around "the whole land of Cush". The KJV of the bible says "Ethiopia" here but the original Hebrew says "Cush", as in one of the grandsons of Noah.  It isn't likely to be the country in Africa. Cush was a common name in the ancient Near East. For some reason, translators in English usually spell it "Kish". Can you see the city of "Kish" on the map above?

Most of the rivers in that area have since changed course, been diverted or dammed up, or some combination of those things. We don't know exactly how they flowed. There is a map at Ancient Origins which shows Kish on a more eastern branch of that division of the Euphrates, basically where the Hillah Branch of the Euphrates River is now. The point is, Kish was a very ancient settlement. And if someone wanted to identify a river in 2000 B.C. (or earlier) by saying that it was the one which ran around or through the "whole land of Cush" that would be the Cush that they meant, not the Daga Cush in eastern Anatolia and certainly not what we now call Ethiopia. 

If so then the Gihon would be this river which flowed through the territory surrounding the long abandoned city of Kish (Cush). The title "King of Kish" was considered an important one to ANE rulers. To add weight to this idea, Kish bears strong indications of Semitic influence. Don't let it confuse you that Cush was a son of Ham. "Semitic influence" refers to a culture which went beyond what we normally think of as "Semite" such as Arabs and Jews. 

So I am now leaning to the idea that the remains of the Gihon River, which was one of the "heads" or "chiefs" unto which the rivers which flowed out of the land of Eden were divided is now called the Hillah. This also raises questions about the identity of Nimrod. In the book I suggested that David Rohl was onto something when he identified Nimrod with Enmerkar of Ur and Uruk. That is still a possibility, but he was a Sumerian and he came later in history, though we don't know quite when, than a Semitic figure who was a King of Kish named Etana. It was he who "consolidated all the foreign lands" according to the Sumerian King's List.  It could be that Etana is the one we know from scripture as Nimrod. 

None of what I have written above changes my proposed locations for the Garden of Eden. The Tigris and Euphrates come close together (and may be fed by the same underground aquifer) near what is now the Keban Reservoir and Lake Hazar. Somewhere between just west of there and Lake Van to the east fit the descriptions either way one reads it. 

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The book isn't mostly about questions such as this, but something vastly more extraordinary. It is about how early Genesis points to the work and person of Christ. Directly, as the original point. Of course this could not be so unless Christ is indeed who scripture says and that same scripture is the product of Divine Inspiration.

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What is Gopher Wood? Do even the Supposed "Errors" in the Text Point to Christ?

Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch (ed. note, NKJV says "cover) it within and without with pitch. - Genesis 6:14 KJV

Noah was commanded to construct the Ark out of "gopher wood". The trouble is, this word "gopher" appears nowhere else in the bible. Nor is it a Hebrew word from anywhere else. Nor does it appear to be a word which was borrowed from languages which influenced Hebrew, though some ideas have been proposed trying to connect those dots. 

One of the most common beliefs is that it refers to cypress or cedar trees, trees which produce a lot of resin. The difficulty with that is that there is a Hebrew word for "cedar" and "gopher" isn't it. Instead, even today in southern Mesopotamia there are rivercraft constructed of sticks and leaves and reeds all twisted together and water-proofed and made fast by being covered by bitumen. They have a name, "kufr", which sounds much like "gopher" would be pronounced were the "g" exchanged for a "k" sound. So it seems like they named the boat for the substance that they used to make the boat- pitch. 

Speaking of exchanging a "k" sound for a "g" sound, it has been noticed that the Hebrew letters which we pronounce like "g" and "k" look very similar. Those letters are called the "gimel" and the "kaf". It would be easy for a transcriber or translator to mix those two letters up, turning the actual Hebrew word for bitumen (or pitch) into the unknown word "gopher". That's right, the word translated "pitch" at the end of Genesis 6:14 above is "kopher", just one similar-looking letter different than the word "gopher" which isn't translated at all because no one understands what it means.

What if the original used "kopher" in both places so that the text would read "Make thee an ark of pitch(ed) wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt cover it within and without with pitch."

The mystery would be solved. There is no such thing as "gopher wood", rather it was "kofer wood" and was referring to the material used to water-proof and bind the wood together rather than the type of tree from which it was taken. In other words, just like people in Mesopotamia today refer to boats made of pitched wood as "kufr", regardless of the type of wood used.

Now, it may be disturbing for some who hold a "high view" of scripture, as I do, to think that even one letter of the text has been altered. But what if the alteration wasn't a mistake, but a message? I think Moses wrote Genesis, but he had help in the form of tablets that were ancient even in his day. This is the "Tablet Theory" proposed by Wiseman. It answers the charge that Genesis was borrowed from earlier Sumerian and Babylonian accounts. The accounts from his ancestors that Moses used to compile early Genesis were also earlier and independent accounts. They may have even formed the basis for the Sumerian and Babylonian accounts instead of vice-versa. The very fact that an unknown word was put into the text is evidence that the children of Israel considered the accounts of early Genesis to have come from the distant past. Perhaps they didn't know what "gopher wood" was either, but they figured that their ancestors did!

The Christ-centered model for early Genesis which I lay out in my book claims that Genesis is a miracle. It is proof of the divinity of Christ and that scriptures are inspired by God because the text only makes sense when looked at through the lens of Christ and His work. This is just what He said the text was about (John 5:46) and as impossible as that sounds, it turns out to be true. This "mistake" may be just another example of that. 

Here is the text with the Hebrew from biblehub.com. Notice that while the KJV has the word "pitch" twice, the Hebrew actually has a somewhat different but related word there, which is translated here and in the NKJV as "cover" (left end of top line). Click on the picture if you want a larger view.

God told Noah that He was going to use Noah to establish His covenant. In the book I show how this is not just the one He made with Noah, but the one that He would make in Christ. Now look at what the word translated "pitch" means.... (Click on the picture if you want a larger view)

What did God want Noah to cover the ark designed to deliver them with? A word that means "the price of a life, ransom". In light of what God said about "establishing His covenant" through Noah, one would have to strain hard in order to avoid seeing how this is connected to the Atonement. Especially in light of what follows....here is the definition of the related word translated "cover" in the interlinear of 6:14 above...(click on picture for a large view)

So in order to "pacify" or "make propitiation" God wanted the ark covered with "the price of a life" or "ransom". To "make propitiation", cover inside and out (not just our outer man but our inner man) with "a ransom, the price of a life". Is anyone shouting "glory" yet? But it goes on...

It turns out the Hebrew letters mean things. The original first letter "kaf", represented "crown" as well as "palm". I am not making that up, the link describing "kaf" like that is from "Hebrew Today", not even a Christian source. These are two elements associated with the crucifixtion of course. But it also represents that the LORD was the rightful King of His people. Numerically, it represents "20", which is half of the number which represents trials, 40.

That letter, kaf, was exchanged for gimel. I believe by Moses as directed by his friend, the LORD God. No one knows for sure what gimel originally represented, except that numerically it is number "three". This also points to the work of Christ who was resurrected on the third day. But there is more. This letter is also associated with the Hebrew word "gomel". I will let the link from "Hebrew Today" tell you what this means...

The shape of the Gimel also reminds of us something else. It looks like a man in motion. A nice lesson from the Jewish teachings actually pertains to this aspect of the Gimel. In Hebrew, the word “gomel,” which begins with and sounds like the letter Gimel, means a “benefactor” or someone who gives to others. The letter after Gimel in the Hebrew alphabet is the letter Dalet, which is the first letter of the word “dal” meaning “weak.” According to this teaching, the Gimel, the benefactor, is walking towards the Dalet who is weak. 

Again, one would have to be very resistant to seeing it in order to not see it (but sadly, plenty are). The letter representing a "crown" is exchanged to one representing a benefactor who is rushing to help someone weaker. Christ is the one who gave up His crown to become a benefactor to us, who are weaker, and He rose again on the third day.

No matter how impossible you think it is that the accounts in Early Genesis could be true, as history and prophecy and not just spiritual allegory, there is nothing impossible for God. Not even this. We haven't understood the story of early Genesis correctly, but it's a true story. If you want to understand how these things could possibly be, a link to my book is below...

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John Walton is Both Right and Wrong on Adam and Eve

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